1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method in which, in accordance with main content, such as sound, an image, or a motion of an object, to be played back or acted, another content, such as sound, an image, or a motion of an object, can be played back or acted with a certain relationship with the main content.
2. Description of the Related Art
Sound playback-only devices, such as compact-disc (CD) players and mini-disk (MD) players, are widely used. In recent years, however, composite (multiple-function) machines, such as personal computers, digital versatile disc (DVD) players, hard disk recorders, that can process both sound data and video data, are also coming into wide use, which increases the opportunity to play back music in such a composite machine by connecting a monitor receiver, such as a television receiver, to the composite machine. Accordingly, there is an increasing demand for displaying appropriate images on a connected monitor receiver while music is being played back.
To address such a demand, a so-called visualizer is currently used. More specifically, while playing back sound data, the spectrum of sound data is analyzed. Then, based on the analysis results and information concerning the volume of the sound data, geometric patterns are generated in real time while the sound data is being played back, and are displayed on the display screen of a monitor receiver.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-092434 discloses an information processing apparatus (visualizer) for displaying images in association with sound. In this image processing apparatus, an image to be displayed can be switched in response with a sound change, and a method for generating a synthesized image from a frequency analyzed image and a selected image can also be switched in response with a sound change. By using the technique disclosed in this publication, images can be presented to users by being associated with sound.